circumstances of process, judges and trial, the nature of the crime and its punishment remaining as it was before. If therefore the Star Chamber departed from the meas ure of the penalty, or in any consideration of the crime varied from the judgment of the common law, it must be understood that the judges acted under their inherent au thority as the council of the king and not by virtue of the statute; for that authority still remained, and the council, in the view of the law, sat and acted in both its capacities. It is to this combination of judicial authority that the Star Chamber owed the enormous power which it began to exert soon after this time. While the statute of Henry VII. gave vigor and efficiency to its proceed ings, the immeasurable scope of its ancient judicature afforded an almost inexhaustible source of crimes and punishments, to be called forth on all occasions, and for every purpose. It became, on that account, the happiest instrument of arbitrary power that ever fell under the management of a sov ereign. Under the Tudors the Star Chamber was a numerous and comparatively mild body, resembling in its constitution and proceed ings a deliberative council rather than an ordinary court of justice,1 and the proceed ings which led to its abolition and made 1 Hudson says that in the reigns of Henry VII. and Henry VIII. the number of members present was at times
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its name infamous were carried on at a time when it had come to consist of a small number of what we should call cabinet ministers, who abused its powers to put down opposition to their policy. The Star Chamber exercised a criminal jurisdiction almost without limitation, and altogether without appeal; taking upon itself to pass judgment .upon everything in which the government felt itself in terested. It became, in truth, as much a court of state as a court of law, by punish ing all obnoxious persons, who, though they had been guilty of no recognized breach of the law, had, nevertheless, offended the prince or his ministers. As the members of the tribunal were the confidential officers of the crown, there was no difficulty in those times of procuring a sentence against offenders of that description. The penalties inflicted latterly became so extravagantly severe, and the exercise of its judicature so repugnant to the spirit of a free constitution, that it was viewed with the greatest abhorrence by the subject. thirty or even forty, as also in the time of Elizabeth. — "But now much lessened since the barons, not being privy councillors, have foreborne their attendanee." He also says that in these times the punishments were far less severe than they were afterwards, fines being then imposed with due regard to the " salvo contenemento suo" of Magna Charter, and the " slavish punishment of whip ping" not having been introduced "till a great man of the common law, and otherwise a worthy justice, forgot his place of session and thought " (it) " in this place too much in use."
